Anna Russell

Anna Russell, née Anna Claudia Russell-Brown (27 December 1911 - 18 October 2006) was an English–Canadian singer and comedienne. She gave many concerts in which she sang and played comic musical sketches on the piano. Among her best works were her concert performances and famous recordings of "The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis)", a humorous 30-minute synopsis of Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen", and (on the same album) her parody "How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera." [ [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/mdanna.htm Review and analysis of Russell's G&S parody] ]

Life and career

Early life

Russell was born in Maida Vale London, England [Her birth registration shows that she was registered as Ann C. Russell-Brown in the March Quarter of 1912 in the registration district of Paddington, Volume 1a, page 9. The Paddington registration district includes Maida Vale. Her mother's maiden name was Tandy.] ["The Guardian" (Patrick O'Connor) [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1929757,00.html Anna Russell: Accomplished musical comedian famous for her lampooning of Wagner's Ring cycle] 24 October 2006] ["The Times" [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2421794.html Anna Russell: Versatile singer and comedienne who parodied works from Wagner to Cole Porter] ] "Daily Telegraph" obituary [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2006/10/21/db2101.xml Anna Russell] 21 October 2006] ["The Globe and Mail" (Sandra Martin) [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061028.OBRUSSELL28/TPStory/Obituaries Anna Russell, SINGER AND PARODIST 1911-2006] ] though some sources say her birthplace was London, Ontario"New York Times" (Edward Rothstein) [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/obituaries/20russell.html Anna Russell, Deft Parodist of Operatic Culture, Dies at 94] 20 October 2006] "Toronto Star" (Olivia Ward) [http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1161553809379 Anna Russell, 94: Opera parodist] 23 October 2006] [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001598_pf.html Washington Post obituary] . See also [http://www.michenermuseum.org/bucksartists/artist.php?artist=212 her James A. Michner Art Museum profile] and [http://www.marbecks.co.nz/detail/index.lsd?catalogID=272415 this New Zealand publisher profile] .] . She was educated at St Felix School at Southwold, Suffolk, at Harrogate College and in Brussels and Paris. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music. She had a difficult childhood, and particularly a difficult relationship with her mother, who often shipped her off to live with other relatives for some time. Russell was twice married and divorced, first to John Denison and second to artist Charles Goldhamer. Neither marriage lasted, and in her Who's Who entry she described herself as single.

Russell's early career included a few engagements in opera (including a disastrous appearance as a substitute Santuzza in a British touring production of "Cavalleria Rusticana", where she clumsily tripped on a set piece and pulled it down - an event later used in her comedy) as well as appearances as a folk singer on BBC radio in 1931. Russell's mother was Canadian, and the family returned in 1939 to Toronto, after her father's death, where she began to appear on local radio stations as an entertainer. [See Bloomberg (Shirley Apthorp) [http://www.bloomberg.co.uk/apps/news?pid=20601088&refer=home&sid=aofoWteWTkhI Anna Russell, Comic Who Made Fun of Richard Wagner, Dies at 94] . See also [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0009613 The Canadian Encyclopedia entry] ] By 1940, she was beginning to find success as a soloist on the concert stage in Canada. Russell's first one-woman show as a parodist was sponsored by the Toronto Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire in 1942, though it was the Canadian conductor Sir Ernest MacMillan who really set her on her international career as a "musical cartoonist", when he invited her to take part in his annual burlesque Christmas Box Symphony Concert in 1944. Russell made her New York City debut in her one-woman show in 1948, which she toured throughout North America, Britain, Australia and the rest of the English-speaking world.

Peak years

In her first major successful season, 1952-53, she performed in 37 cities in the United States and Canada before an estimated 100,000 listeners. Her recording "Anna Russell Sings?" became a best seller. She wrote the lyrics and music for "Anna Russell's Little Show" (1953) and sang the role of the Witch in an animated film of the opera "Hansel and Gretel" in 1954, also singing that role at New York City Opera the same year and with the Cosmopolitan Opera in San Francisco in 1957. [Bloomfield, Arthur "The San Francisco Opera" (Comstock, 1978) notes Russell's affiliation with the Cosmopolitan Opera (a group that ceased operations in 1960) at page 182.]

She brought "Anna Russell's Little Show" to Broadway in 1953 and also appeared on Broadway in "All by Myself" in 1960. With Robert Paine Grose and Joan White, she founded Grow Productions, Inc. in 1963, which presented "Lady Audley's Secret" at the New York World's Fair in 1964. She also played a leading role in Noel Coward's comedy "Blithe Spirit". Russell appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and in a number of plays and television episodes. She performed her concerts at New York's Carnegie Hall and London's Royal Albert Hall. In 1977, she played the Duchess of Crackenthorp in the Canadian Opera Company production of "Daughter of the Regiment".

Russell became known for her deadpan humour, including her disbelieving emphasis of the absurd in well accepted stories and her mockery of pretension. For example, in her humorous analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she began by noting that the first scene takes place in the River Rhine: "In" it!!" After pointing out that a character in the Ring Cycle is the first woman that Siegfried has ever met who is not his aunt, she pauses and declares, "I'm not making this up, you know!" This phrase also became the title of her autobiography, published in 1985. Besides her Ring and Gilbert and Sullivan parodies, Russell was famous for other routines, including "Wind Instruments I Have Known", and parodies of lieder ("Schlumpf"), French art song ("Je ne veux pas faire l’amour") and English folksong ("I Wish I Were a Dicky-Bird").

She composed, wrote, and performed her own material for Columbia Records, was the author of "The Power of Being a Positive Stinker "(1955) and the "Anna Russell Songbook" (1958), and was the President of the B & R Music Publishing Company. She received the Canadian Women's Press Club Award in 1956 as the best Canadian comedy writer of the year. Giving advice on how to be a successful singer, she quipped that although a glorious voice was important, "it helps to be an independently wealthy, politically motivated, back-stabbing bitch."

Later years

Russell retired to Unionville, Ontario, Canada in the late 1960s, living on a street named after her, but she gave farewell performances in her 70s, parodying opera divas who did the same. In her last years, she moved to Australia, where she lived with her adopted daughter, Deirdre Prussak, in Rosedale near Batemans Bay, New South Wales, where she died. Prussak was the author of "Anna in a Thousand Cities", a memoir of Anna Russell's life.
Australian Broadcasting Company South East NSW website [http://www.abc.net.au/southeastnsw/stories/s1768984.htm Goodbye Anna Russell] 19 October 2006]

Books

*Autobiography: "I'm Not Making This Up, You Know" (a quote from her Ring of the Nibelungs routine), ISBN 0-8264-0364-6, was published by Continuum in 1985. Edited by Janet Vickers.
*"The Power of Being a Positive Stinker" / Perpetrated by Anna Russell, New York : Citadel Press, c1955. Reissued by Deirdre Prussak Books, Rosedale NSW 2536, Australia [http://www.morning.com.au/annarussell]
*"The Anna Russell Songbook", New York: Citadel Press, c1960. Includes lyrics and scores of: I Gave My Love a Cherry; Rikki Tikki; Jolly old Sigmund Freud; Old Mother Slipper Slopper; Je N’ai Pas la Plume de Ma Tante; I’m Only a Faded Rose; Two Time Man; How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera; Advice on Song Selection for Concert Singers: A Square Talk on Popular Music; Anna Russell’s Guide to Concert Audiences
*"Anna in a Thousand Cities", Rosedale NSW, Australia; by Deirdre Prussak; ISBN 0-9580819-0-5 [http://www.morning.com.au/annarussell] : (memoir by Russell's adopted daughter)

Recordings

*"Anna Russell Sings? Advice on Song Selection for Concert Singers"
*"Anna Russell Sings! Again?" 1953, Columbia Masterworks, ML4594/ML4733
**Side One: “The Ring of the Nibelungs” (An Analysis)
**Side Two: Introduction to the Concert (By the Women’s Club President); How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.
*"The Anna Russell Album" Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. (combination of Sings and Sings, Again) (reissued on CD, 1991, Sony Masterworks, MDK 47252)
*"Anna Russell, Encore?" Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.; (Sony Classical #SFK 60316)
*"Anna Russell Again?" (Sony Classical #SFK60317).
*"Anna Russell’s Guide to Concert Audiences"
*"Anna Russell in Darkest Africa"
*"A Square Talk on Popular Music"
*"A Practical Banana Promotion"
*"Anna Russell at the Sydney Opera House" (EMI OASD-7581)(some of the info above was from [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/mdanna.htm this site] )

Filmography

*The Clown Princess of Comedy (1996 listing from Amazon Canada [http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0009MAPHW] )
*The (First) Farewell Concert. Video Artists International 69019. VHS Hi-Fi. Running time 1 hour, 25 minutes. Recorded live at the Baltimore Museum of Art, November 7, 1984. Includes: How to Become a Singer; Wind Instruments I Have Known; On Pink Chiffon; How to Write your Own Gilbert & Sullivan Opera; Analysis of the "Ring Cycle"; Backwards with the Folk Song.
*"Hansel and Gretel": voice of the Witch in animated version of the opera by Engelbert Humperdinck, RKO Radio Pictures, 1954 (reissued by V.I.E.W. Video, NYC on DVD [http://www.view.com/home-opera.html#VV2421] )
*The Gentlemen of Titipu (1973); Arcifanfano, King of Fools; Play, Performance, Perception: The way of the world; Omnibus. TV-Radio Workshop of the Ford Foundation; producer, Robert Saudek.

Quotes and trivia

*Famous quotation: "I'm not making this up, you know!" (from Wagner "Ring" plot)
*A street in Unionville, Canada, Anna Russell Way, is named after Anna Russell. ]

References

External links

*imdb name|0750996
* [http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=4157 Anna Russell] at the Internet Broadway Database
*Bloomberg News (Shirley Apthorp) [http://www.bloomberg.co.uk/apps/news?pid=20601088&refer=home&sid=aofoWteWTkhI Anna Russell, Comic Who Made Fun of Richard Wagner, Dies at 94]
*BBC programme: "All the Right Notes, Not Necessarily in the Right Order" [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/alltherightnotes/pip/v62cd/ Anna Russell]
* [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0003065 Encyclopedia of Music in Canada entry]
*"Washington Post" (Matt Schudel) [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001598.html Anna Russell; Singer Found Fame in Satire]
* [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0009613 The Canadian Encyclopedia biography]

Persondata
NAME=Russell, Anna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Russell-Brown, Anna Claudia
SHORT DESCRIPTION=British singer and comedian
DATE OF BIRTH=1911-12-27
PLACE OF BIRTH=either London, England or London, Ontario, Canada
DATE OF DEATH=2006-10-18
PLACE OF DEATH=Batemans Bay, Australia